Drawn

by David Alan Jones

  “We get to be her votaries?” The girl looked star struck.

  Rose very deliberately did not squirm in her seat.

  “Hell yes. Next time you wake up feeling like you’ve got a hangover, just figure Rose is out there kicking ass.”

  Everyone laughed.

  A somewhat hefty guy with glasses and curly black hair asked, “Aren’t you guys worried about writing yourselves into a corner? Once the Order takes out Society, won’t they have to become what they hate?”

  “What’s that guy doing in our crowd?” Brendan asked. “Shouldn’t you be over in the novels section working your panel?”

  “Don’t try to weasel out of the question,” said the guy, grinning. “You’re going to face a real conundrum in a few months. How are you going to handle it?”

  Luke smirked. “As one of your buddies always says, you novelists have the luxury of rewriting before you go to press. But we comic artists rely on something you don’t have.”

  “Which is?” asked the man with a lilt in his voice.

  “A king’s wit, my friend.”

  That brought more and louder laughter from the crowd, most of whom seemed to know the mystery questioner.

  Rose felt at sea. Was that guy famous? Someone she should know on sight?

  Everything these people said confused her. They spoke English, she understood every word, but the parlance made no sense. And yet, the atmosphere was intoxicating. She felt a kind of acceptance she had never experienced. A bringing-in sort of feeling, a homecoming. And mixed with it came something more, something electric. She could feel the breadth of her votaries expanding.

  “My question is for Rose,” said a middle-aged woman in the front row dressed as a nineteenth-century Victorian aristocrat. A vampire stake on a hempen rope dangled between her breasts.

  “Go ahead,” Rose said.

  “Are you able to feel each votary—maybe take strength from a few and save the rest?”

  Rose felt her cheeks flush. She had never spoken with anyone outside her family and fellow succubi about drawing. “No. I can’t draw from just one person. I draw from them all equally.”

  A young girl, probably fourteen, her face red, her friends giggling, asked, “Where’s Matt Snow?”

  “Too busy to be with us,” Brendan said. “You like Matt?”

  The girl looked too embarrassed to answer, but one of her friends yelled, “He’s hot.”

  “You’re telling us,” Luke said.

  “Speaking of hot,” Brendan said. “We thought we would have our Rosie put on a little show for you. Would you all like that?”

  The crowd cheered.

  Rose blanched.

  “No one said anything about a show,” she hissed in Luke’s ear.

  “Yeah. It’s more exciting this way.”

  A couple of the event volunteers wheeled out four oversized kettlebells. The men strained to move the things despite the dollies they used. Rose had never seen the like. The smallest kettlebell, its weight indelibly marked on the side, read one hundred twenty-five pounds. The other three weighed one hundred fifty, one hundred seventy-five, and two hundred pounds respectively.

  Luke made a big show of calling for volunteers to try lifting any one of the weights. Several people, including a well-muscled guy dressed as He-Man, gave it a go. He-Man managed to deadlift them but begged off performing any swings with the things. He didn’t want to throw his back out.

  “You know,” Brendan whispered to Rose while Luke called for more volunteers, “it occurs to me now we never asked how much you can lift in one go.”

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Rose said. “It’s going to draw attention.”

  “This kind of attention is good. Nobody in the real world cares what we geeks do at these cons. Not unless we trash our hotel rooms or, well, that’s about it. They don’t give a shit.”

  “Now our lovely Rose will take a turn,” Luke said, motioning toward her like a model showing off a new car.

  The security detail pushed the crowd back, and Rose took her place before the weights. She drew strength and lifted the first kettlebell over her head where she held it without faltering.

  The crowd exploded with cheers.

  It was surprisingly easy, Rose found, to maintain her draw. Even with her old votaries, her family, this would have been a manageable weight, but she couldn’t have held it so long.

  Emboldened by her initial success, and still holding the small weight, Rose grasped the second one and hoisted it overhead too.

  He-Man cursed, but he clapped louder than anyone. The women especially cheered, as if Rose represented them in some triumph of womanhood.

  Slowly, she lowered the two smaller weights and, ignoring the middle one, moved to the heaviest. She made a pretense of shaking out her arms though they felt fine. The strength she drew just from this crowd put her in good stead. Still, she wouldn’t want the twins accusing her of putting on a bad show. Closing her eyes, she took several deep breaths, then took hold of the two-hundred-pound monstrosity and tossed it into the air.

  The crowd gasped. A few lifted their arms in that spasmodic, involuntary way people do when threatened by speeding baseballs or oncoming bridge pylons.

  The weight flew perhaps two feet above Rose’s head, reached its apex, and began accelerating back toward the floor. She caught it in her off hand, slowing its descent so that it swung between her legs, her arm pinioned by its weight against her thigh. Then she threw it back into the air. This time she caught it two-handed and lowered it slowly, quietly to the floor.

  The crowd burst into applause. Whistles and shouts of astonishment filled the conference center. He-Man looked like someone had clubbed him.

  Luke took Rose by the arm and guided her back to the table. “That was perfect,” he said in a stage whisper. “I knew we picked the right girl.”

  Despite herself, Rose’s chest swelled with pride. Did she actually like cons?

  The staff chivvied the crowd into a line. It snaked out the conference room door and down the adjoining corridor.

  “Is it always like this?” Rose asked.

  “Like what?” Brendan asked as he signed a much-abused comic for a gangly kid in glasses.

  “Crowded. Loud,” Rose said. “Exciting.”

  Luke grinned at her. “Addictive, ain’t it?”

  Rose nodded. The kid had shoved his comic, which had nothing to do with her, in front of Rose.

  “Would you sign it too, ma’am?” he asked. His voice cracked.

  “Uh, sure.” Rose smiled at him and scrawled her new moniker under the brothers’ signatures.

  “I’ll have a copy of yours at the next convention,” the kid said, before hurrying off.

  “Did you guys hear what’s happening in Mexico?” asked the next man in line.

  Luke shook his head as he took the guy’s copy of Drawn to sign.

  “We’re invading.” The guy looked shaken. “Tanks rolled over the border thirty minutes ago. It’s insane.”

  “What?” Rose and Luke asked at the same time.

  “The president is set to speak about it at noon. But we all know what she’s gonna say—it’s about controlling the drug cartels. Yeah, right. She just wants to get her hands on their oil. Anyway, you gonna put that in Drawn?”

  “Of course we will.” Luke remained chipper though the color had drained from his face. He took the man’s comic, signed, and passed it to Rose.

  She signed fast and shoved the book back to the delighted fan. Once he was gone, she leaned close to Luke. “Does this mean we’re at war with the vampires?”

  “No,” Luke said. “It means we’re at war with everybody.”

  15

  Guadalupe Victoria

  It was six p.m. when the convoy arrived at Guadalupe Victoria, a tiny village in northern Mexico. The sun hung low on the horizon, coloring the clouds in reds and pinks.

  Despite the state of war, crossing the border had been easy. Given the amount of c
oncentrated charm held by the thirty men and women of their company, they probably could have told the guards at the military checkpoint they were transporting the Pope to the front lines and still gotten permission to proceed.

  “You sure this is the place?” Matt asked from the driver’s seat of their blacked-out Suburban.

  “As sure as I can be,” Myra Hanks said.

  Per Robin Ambrose’s sources inside the Indrawn Breath, special teams of takers had been dispatched immediately after the invasion with a mandate to track down and capture succubi in Mexico. Working autonomously, these teams were difficult to track, unless you had a near-clairvoyant former math teacher to lead the way.

  Rose stared out the window at the town. Its single road, a pitted and pot-holed dirt affair, made their truck shudder, its suspension groaning in protest. Like many tiny pueblos she had seen on the drive in, this one contained a handful of stone buildings at its center surrounded by a few outlying shacks too small to be called houses. Unlike the others, however, its cobblestoned square featured a large, burbling fountain and a parish church. The church’s façade, painted a dusty pink trimmed in red, put Rose in mind of old western movies. A bell tower jutted from it, the highest point for miles.

  Several of the village’s citizens appeared from their stucco homes to watch the newcomers. A woman stood hugging her son to her side in the lee of a weather-beaten building. An older couple riding a pair of matching rockers in front of what looked like a butcher’s shop watched them with obvious distrust. And still more faces, solemn and stoic, appeared at windows, watching in silent interest.

  Matt’s voice buzzed over the team’s main communications channel. “Contact crew, assemble next to that fountain. Everyone else remain in the vans. These people have got no reason to trust a bunch of American invaders, especially if they’re slinkers looking to avoid the government.”

  Rose checked the tiny camera affixed to her body armor. Still there. Wearing the thing made her self-conscious, but the Pruett twins insisted, as did Robin and Matt. The boys claimed watching firsthand video put them in the now, whatever that meant. Rose hoped it wouldn’t capture her doing something stupid.

  A hot May wind whispered through the square as Rose and the other contact team members climbed from the van. Even with evening coming on, the heat was stifling, the air dry and full of blowing dust. Rose wanted to peel off her body armor. The stuff felt like top-grade insulation. But the op order specified all team members had to remain buttoned up. No one knew what to expect from the locals.

  Rose stood between Matt’s deputy, Tanner Watts, and her old draw sergeant, Gloria Torres, who had brought three members of her team along. Myra Hanks and Garrett Timmons stood opposite them.

  Without preamble, Matt said, “We need to find whoever’s in charge around here. I figure that will be a constable or mayor. What do you think, Gloria?”

  Torres nodded. “Whoever it is, I’m sure he’s already seen us. Let’s talk to some locals. I figure they’ll lie to us, but Carver can charm them.”

  “That’s why she’s here.” Matt almost grinned.

  They approached the old couple on the rockers. They hadn’t moved but watched the team with wary expressions. Torres said something to them in Spanish. Rose wished she had paid more attention to her language studies back in high school. She didn’t understand a word of it.

  The old man answered in a raspy near-whisper, shaking his head no as he spoke.

  Rose didn’t need to understand the words to interpret the meaning. He wasn’t about to cooperate with a bunch of rich Americans.

  She turned on her charm.

  The old guy’s eyes dilated; his focus, along with that of the woman beside him, turned to Rose.

  “Ask him again,” she said.

  “No need,” said a voice from inside the butcher’s shop. A plump woman wearing a red and green knit skirt stepped from the shadows. “You’re looking for me.”

  Matt regarded her, his expression kind, but guarded. “Are you the mayor?”

  “I am. My name is Glenda Rodriguez. Who are you? What do you want?” Though accented, the mayor’s English sounded flawless.

  “Is there somewhere we could speak privately?” Matt raised his chin, indicating the nearest storefront.

  “No.”

  “It’s a delicate matter, Ms. Rodriguez. You might not want your people to hear what I have to say.”

  “I’m sure I don’t. But that isn’t going to stop you, is it, Mr. Snow?”

  “Please, Mayor, I—”

  Rodriguez held up a hand. “Let me save you some time, Mr. American incubus. You know what we are here.” She glanced at the six black Suburbans and five vans parked in her town square, so incongruous with the pastoral setting. “And I know what you are. You think because Mexico has no Society that you can come south during war and take us away for God knows what reason? We’ve heard of this from other villages—the men with their guns stealing away the gifted among them. Americans like you. Scum.” Rodriguez spit next to Matt’s combat boots.

  Matt kept his gaze fixed on the mayor. “Ma’am, I assure you, no one on my team wants to take you from your home. We’re not the ones you’ve heard about. We’re here to protect you.”

  Rodriguez gave a contemptuous grunt. Suddenly, a wash of charm exuded from her, thick and insistent. “Get back in your fancy cars and go home, Americano. You hear me?”

  “No,” Matt said. “I don’t think so.”

  Rodriguez’s eyes widened. Her charm was deep, and Rose could tell the woman was accustomed to being obeyed whenever she leveled it on someone. But it was no match for even Matt’s draw of the same.

  Thanks to the success of the graphic novel, all those closest to Rose had benefited from her new fans. Though their depth and breadth of votaries couldn’t rival Rose’s own, Matt, Leslie, Satterfield, and even Torres had gained strength over the past weeks as the twins beat the advertising drum by sending out prerelease goodies like early proof samples and other teasers. When the graphic novel finally hit the shelves two days ago, their votary counts had exploded.

  “You won’t take us from our homes without a fight,” Rodriguez said. “We live here in peace. We break no laws with our gifts. And we have protection.”

  “You don’t have protection against what’s coming,” Matt said. “The men you fear are on their way now. We’ve come to give you warning. You should flee. Now. Come back when things have settled.”

  “Settled? Are you loco? There’s a war going on. We’re safer here than roaming the desert. Anyway, I told you, we are protected. If you want to help us, then leave. You shouldn’t be here after dark.”

  A sudden voice crackled in Rose’s earbud. “Sir, we’ve got trucks inbound.” It was Phillips, a female op, and leader of the Dog Ears’ perimeter defense.

  Matt keyed his throat mic. “How many?”

  A pause. “I count fourteen JLTVs. Several of them are category B. They’ve also got eight utility vans. The big kind.”

  JLTVs, or Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, were the U.S. Army’s answer to the all-purpose, all-terrain assault transport for the twenty-first century. Armored enough to enter a hot zone and yet light enough to maneuver quickly, the powerful trucks could deliver troops to the front lines of an assault with minimum chance of interdiction barring anything besides serious firepower on the opposing side.

  The Order possessed no such firepower.

  “Category B,” Watts said, his face grim. “That means they’re outfitted for troop transport. We’re looking at probably seventy-five, maybe up to ninety personnel.”

  Matt nodded. “Mayor Rodriguez, the people you’ve heard about, the Americans who kidnap succubi, they are here. You need to get your people out of this village. Now.”

  “No,” Rodriguez said, hands on her ample hips. “You’re not going to scare us into a trap, Americano. You think we can’t fight, but you’re wrong. And tonight, you will pay for your stupidity.”

  A distant, heavy
thrum echoed from the northwest along the town’s single meandering road. A static-filled curse blasted over the radio, and then Phillips’s voice returned. “Captain Snow, we’ve been made. I don’t know how they saw us, but five of the vehicles have broken off. We have enemy converging on our position. They’re polydraws, sir.”

  “Can you fall back—get to the village?”

  “No, sir. We’re cut off.”

  More gunfire erupted. The steady clack-clack-clack of automatic rifles was punctuated every few seconds by the sternum-shaking boom of something much higher caliber.

  Rose’s stomach twisted. Live fire exercises at Camp Den couldn’t compare to the real thing. Sure, the thundering booms felt familiar, but Rose’s instructors had never shot at her with deadly intent. The people discharging these weapons possessed no other objective. They fought to kill, and that difference sent a cold shiver of fear down her spine, not just for herself, but for her team.

  A column of dust rose in the distance. Faintly, Rose could hear approaching engines. She drew hearing and made out the individual vehicles, nine of them—chugging diesel power plants running at top speed.

  “Everybody out of the vans,” shouted Matt into his radio. “I need shooters positioned on the road and around the plaza. Watts, take care of that. Keep the firing lanes clear and the civilians off the streets.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  “Phelps.”

  “Yes, sir,” Leslie said. The young sharpshooter kept pace with Matt as he strode across the square. She carried her favorite rifle strapped over one shoulder.

  “I need you in that bell tower.” He pointed at it with two fingers. “I’m pulling our forces inside the village, so if you see something moving outside the perimeter, shoot it.” He turned to Rose. “Get the drones in the air.”

  She considered arguing. Rolling death rushed toward them in the form of armed Breathers. Was now the time to worry about the succubi twin’s demands? But one look at Matt’s face shut her up quick. “On it!”

  Watts had organized a pass line at the back of one van, handing out guns and equipment with phenomenal speed and efficiency. He gave her a nod when Rose stepped forward. “Drones?”